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Roadside photography collection comes to GMOA

An exhibition showcasing snapshots of Southern ephemera opened this weekend at the Georgia Museum of Art.

The photographic work of John Baeder, a photorealist painter born in Indiana but raised in Atlanta, is emerging to prominence alongside his famous portraits of American diners and other roadside banalities, and is now on display at the museum.

The GMOA show of Baeder’s work is really three mini-exhibtions, said Hillary Brown, the museum’s director of communications.

Known for his exact painted duplications of decaying American architecture, Baeder worked from photographs to build his realistic scenes.

The museum displays those blueprints from an original collection created by the Thomas Paul Gallery in Los Angeles called “American Roadside.”

Also on display are photographs taken while Baeder worked in advertising in Atlanta, including frames from 1963 of the part of Atlanta where Turner Field now stands. The museum collected the photographs from Baeder, who now works in Nashville, Tenn.

Baeder, born in 1938, developed an interest in hand-painted street signs in the early ’60s, documenting the brush strokes and typography used in their creation.

“They have interesting lettering,” Brown said. “Something that someone with training would never do.”

The signs are a type of folk art, Brown said.

“There’s always something a little bit off,” she said. “But the photographs are framed with an artist’s eye that makes them lovely.”

The collection fits in well with the museum’s interest in Southern art, Brown said. And the museum has organized a series of events coinciding with the roadside theme of Baeder’s photographs and paintings.

The exhibit runs through July, and throughout June, the museum has organized a series of films that touch on some aspect of Baeder’s work, including “Diner” and “Junebug.”

On June 9, the GMOA will host a road trip in which attendees will tour the collection and then paint their own roadside signs.